This month we exhibited the IRI electrotherapy products, books, DVDs, and reports at the Natural Living Expo here in the Washington DC area (Fairfax VA). It was a pleasure to talk to everyone about our mission, products and publications. I even gave a one hour Seminar Training on Modern Meditation which, if you missed it, is also available on YouTube for free online at www.tinyurl.com/ModernMeditation. I include a lot of great scientific findings about the health and brain benefits from learning this three step technique that anyone can do on a regular basis, especially to avoid the usual “cortical thinning” with advanced age.

Another accomplishment this month was my participation in the 3rd Online International Conference on Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change on November 15-16, 2021. For this event, they accepted my recorded www.tinyurl.com/ValoneClimateVideo presentation (from our COFE12 Zoom conference) which is full of dynamic facts and quantitative predictions of climate warming and carbon capture solutions.

Today, we have a breakthrough in Story #1 with the first time testing in-orbit of a new electric ion propulsion technology. Published in Nature magazine as an Open Access article just a few days ago, the In-orbit demonstration of an iodine electric propulsion system | Nature, uses solid iodine that requires no pressure to keep it stable since it is kept at below 100 °C to keep it from melting. And of course, outer space is also pretty cold as well. The space tech company ThrustMe, already has an impressive portfolio of iodine thrusters available, all in the millinewton range which is up to 500 watts.

Story #2 offers another innovation with a solution to the lithium-ion battery source issue. The University of Texas at Autin has successfully developed a novel polymer membrane containing crown ethers – chemically functionalized ligands – to pull lithium through an aqueous brine solution with the highest selectivity ever documented for a dense, water-swollen polymer. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Physics World featured the story a month ago. A related article on the topic offers a perspective on the lithium market: Process innovations benefit battery manufacture – Physics World .

Story #3 brings us the ongoing excitement of the flying car promise by various manufacturers. Now Japan is set to start producing the SkyDrive SD-03 Flying Vehicle | SkyDrive Inc. (skydrive2020.com) by 2025 with an environmentally compatible, zero-emission electric aircraft structure. Will your place of employment offer a landing pad with a charging station for you?

Story #4 is huge, mainly because terawatts are huge. The surprise for such a big production of up to 36 TWh per year is that the Webber Energy Group at the U of Texas at Austin are talking only about Rights-Of-Way (ROW) around “highway exits” using an estimate from a new highway solar evaluation tool Solar - The Ray | Let's drive the future. - The Ray | Let's drive the future. The Ray produces a graph that gives Texas, Illinois, and California the highest availability with over 1.75 TWh per year for each of them. The implication is that such locations can serve as charging stations perhaps for up to 12 million passenger electric vehicles. A related story https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/09/10/solar-in-uncommon-spaces/ offers other great insights, such as covering a water reservoir with floating solar panels that also reduces evaporation.

Story #5 also offers a wow moment with a rental car company this month ordering 100,000 Teslas. Hertz therefore offers customers this month the option of renting an electric vehicle (Tesla Model 3 sedan). The sale has boosted Tesla’s car company evaluation to over $1 trillion which is quite remarkable, showing that Elon Musk was really a visionary. This story is all over the internet, so an open access version may be preferable, such as Hertz to buy 100,000 Tesla cars in push to offer electric vehicles - CBS News

Sincerely,

Full in-orbit operation of a satellite-powered by iodine gas has now been carried out by space tech company ThrustMe, and the technology promises to lead to satellite propulsion systems that are more efficient and affordable than ever before. "Iodine is significantly more abundant and cheaper than xenon, and has the added advantage that it can be stored unpressurized as a solid," says Dmytro Rafalskyi, the CTO and co-founder of ThrustMe.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04015-y

A new way to extract lithium from contaminated water could make this technologically important metal much easier to produce. The technique, which involves passing aqueous brines through lithium-selective polymeric membranes, works in a way that mimics the potassium channels that regulate the balance of ions in biological systems.

Lithium has several applications in low-carbon energy and is widely employed in electrochemical technologies. Lithium-ion batteries, for example, dominate today’s market for rechargeable power storage thanks to the element’s low mass, large reduction potential and high energy density.

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/37/e2022197118

A flying car has gained the first safety certificate issued by Japan, allowing them to commercialize their eVTOL vehicles as soon as 2025. This marks the first flying car to reach this stage in Japan, and could pave the way for this decade to be the decade of flying cars. 

SkyDrive’s eVTOL electric flying car concept is currently represented by the SD-03, which made a successful manned flight demonstration in August 2020. Carrying just a single seat, the SD-03 is powered by eight propellers in a quadcopter formation and has a range of around 10 minutes flight time, reaching top speeds of 30 miles per hour (48 kilometers per hour)

The study found that installing solar panels at highway exits could generate up to 36 TWh per year. That is enough to power 12 million passenger electric vehicles, and has an estimated value of energy of $4 billion per year, said Esri.

Installing solar arrays at interchanges, exits, rest areas, visitor centers, which are maintained by state governments, can be challenging due to safety, environmental, and future land-use concerns. To address this, The Ray partnered with Esri to configure a solar mapping tool that analyzes how suitable and economically valuable a given ROW location might be.

CNN News November 2021

In the single largest purchase of electric vehicles ever, Hertz plunked down an order for 100,000 Teslas worth about $4.2 billion. In another first, Tesla closed the day up more than 12% with a market value of $1.03 trillion, putting it in a league with Apple, Microsoft (LinkedIn's parent company), Amazon and Alphabet. Starting in November, Hertz customers will be able to rent Model 3 sedans in major U.S. markets and parts of Europe. The move by Hertz, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, is part of a plan to electrify half of its fleet, including trucks.

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